Turkey Detour To Montana

Man we've got a treat for you guys this week on the Southern Ground Hunting Podcast. We've been really trying to stick with deer content throughout the spring, but sometimes a turkey hunting story is so good, you just have to share it wherever it can be told. So we're going to tell you a story of how three southern gentlemen traveled to Montana and killed 6 gobblers in an hour. It got western. 

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All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Southern Ground Hunting Podcast. I am for the first time ever, actually live in Montana. Never recorded a podcast in Montana because I have never been to Montana. But these two gentlemen [00:01:00] that I'm joined with have been here quite a few times. Jake Bliss.

Jake, do you like Jake or Jacob? Whatever you feel more comfortable with. What do most people call you? Probably just Jacob. Jacob? Yeah. Jacob Bliss is joining us and Joey Bell. Joey Bell has been on the podcast before. Already also co-host the Limb Hanger podcast with me and Adam. Joey. Welcome back to the southern gr the Dark side.

The deer side. I feel dirty being here. You should feel dirty because turkeys are pretty fresh on our minds right now. Also you're gonna have to forgive us for this road noise. I don't have any podcasts and stuff cuz we flew in had a lot of gear to bring and all that. That stuff, but so we're recording straight to the computer on the computer microphone.

So forgive the road noise. Either you can stick with us or don't. And you'll, I might just solidify your decision by telling you that [00:02:00] we are in fact gonna talk about turkeys today because we, it's one of those experiences that we had that it deserves to be shared on both southern ground and limb hangar.

We shot a bunch of turkeys. That might be an understatement. How would you guys describe it? That's the CliffNotes version. We shot a lot of turkeys. We shot all, we shot a lot of turkeys in a short amount of time. In a very short amount of time. Yeah. So we got here to Montana. Freak. What's today?

Today is Wednesday. We got here Monday. We got here Monday. So flew in. Got a rental car, which is a, it's just an immaculate machine. Joey, great job. Yeah, they really treated us. They got us free upgrades, so we got a giant suburban 2023 suburban transformer, Turkey limousine, Turkey limo, and got our stuff together and [00:03:00] headed off to some property that Jacob family property that he had access to, which is probably one of the more important parts of this.

Story. I think not to pull, try to pull blinds or fool people, like we were a hundred percent on private land that does not see just a ton of Turkey hunting pressure, if any. Yeah. Yeah. Not much at all. It's and the whole area as a whole isn't receiving just a ton of Turkey pressure, and so I think you could, I think people can hear stories like the one we're about to share and think, wow, there's.

Must just be so many turkeys all over the place in Montana, Western, Western Turkey, hunting's easy. And it's really not, we just were blessed with a pretty cool opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. The Miriams are still in pockets, like we talked about before, in especially on a limb hangar and all these other podcasts.

Miriam's are still in pockets, and we were Ron Smack dab in the middle of one of those pockets. We were in [00:04:00] the front shirt pocket. Yeah. We were there. Their front shirt pocket full of Miriams. There were plenty of Miriams to be had 15 that we know about, that we know about, that were on this property.

And I'm sure there are more. And that's 15 gobblers. Yeah, that's just like 15 turkeys. That's 15 breeding gobblers. Yeah. There's a bunch of them. And and we knew that. And so going into it we had. The hope that it could potentially turn out the way that it did, but we really didn't have everybody that everybody knows.

You just can't get too overconfident. It doesn't matter what driving around the property the day before or what happens on the first day. First day might be crazy. There's no telling with turkeys like how quickly that could change. And but we did see that day driving around that there were a substantial amount of.

Gobblers in the area. And so I, I think a lot of people have already, I shared the pictures on [00:05:00] social media and some people have already responded negatively to it. Thinking like, why would you want to shoot that many turkeys off of one property? A spoiler alert? They were mixed results. Yeah.

But but it was, this property could handle it and the landowners didn't have any issue with it and the surrounding properties. Yeah. It's not like he's. Turkeys were just huddled into this one little property. It was an area multiple properties and they would just they would do their Miriam's thing and that they would move around all day, but it was at a mud slower pace.

They would just work their way from property to property and slow slowly. They had no, no rush to be anywhere to do anything. They just moved like molasses all day long, even when we got 'em fired up. Yeah. Yeah. They were still like, they were coming on a string pretty much like they were coming to it, but it was like inch by forever.

By inch. Yeah. If we had stayed where we first set up that day, it would've [00:06:00] taken them Yeah. All day to get there. Yeah. Yeah. We would've got up by dark. All right. Sorry. We gave a lot away, but yesterday morning is where this story really takes off cuz we had seen the, all these turkeys around.

On the property that evening before and we knew that they were probably gonna be roosted pretty close. And lo and behold, they were roosted very close to where we were sleeping at. Do you want to know more about saddle hunting? Or you can go to tethered nation.com for all your saddle hunting Queens tethered is four saddle hunters by saddle hunters, and they're redefining ultralight hunting.

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And we just worked our way over there. I'm trying to remember, did we ever see a gobbler fly down after fly down other than the one on the other side of the property? I don't think so. We didn't see any of those gobbler. I can't, no, I didn't think we saw any of 'em struck as well after fly down that we saw those, way off.

Yeah. They had already moved that way. They were threw some trees on another piece of property across the road. Yeah. And, but still, like we heard a ton of Turkey gobbling. Yes. Like it a similar hunt in the south would've been rare. We would've been excited after that was like, that was our, one of the best mornings of hunt I've ever had.

Do you hear that many? Turkey got one. And so we, we made some moves, took a coffee and cookie break which was arguably one of the better parts of the day. Yeah, went back to the house and had coffee and cookies. This is a private land[00:09:00] privilege. Yeah. Hunting where you can go out for the first round for a couple of few hours and we're like, eh, we'll just come back out.

So we go back to the house and get a cup of coffee in us and like partners said, any cookies and shooting the BS for a little while and then we go back out. Yeah. It also felt like we had been out there a whole. Lot longer that morning before we went in for the break because it got daylight so early then it takes daylight at five 30 and they started gobbling at five o'clock in the morning.

Yeah. If not before. Cuz that's the first time I walked outside was five o'clock. And it was already daylight, like it was already light. Yeah, it was daylight. You could already see light in the sky, but it takes so long for it to finally come up. But these turkeys flew down. I mean it was before six.

Yeah, it was like five 30. They were on the ground probably we. And so we couldn't really, we got up late for what we, or we got out there late. What we probably should have done looking back, if we would've had to hunt another day, we would've [00:10:00] probably done this is be in our position at that gray light time.

That way we could do some tree else. Because what we figured out, there's not a lot of hens. Like hanging out with them. There's one or two in 87. Gobbler. Definitely a boys club. Yeah. Sausage. Party, what did we say? Chloe Fest. Yeah, it's Alo Fest. Oh. And so if we would've been able to get over there and actually do a little bit of tree yelping back to him there's no telling what could've happened. We might have shot 'em right off the rouse, you just figure those things out. Things out west are there. There are differences. And with Turkey hunt, And dude I remember the first time coming to Nebraska and you don't realize how early it's gonna start getting daylight.

So you're like planning on getting to the WM a by six, and they're already dang moving around at six. They're on the ground by six. Yeah. Yeah. They're yeah, they I [00:11:00] feel like birds out west get on the ground a lot earlier than birds in the east. And the great thing about 'em is that they will continue.

Continue to gobble Yeah. Throughout the day if you can stay close to 'em. And so they're, I don't want anybody to think that it's easy hunting out west because it can def definitely be a challenge. But Miriam's turkeys are a lot, there's differences in how they respond to things, how you hunt them.

But it's still fun nonetheless. And they're arguably the prettiest bird that exists. As far as turkeys go, I think this, the amount that they gobbled being so much more than these Turkey. One, they let you know where they're at all the time because of the frequency that they gobble and you can call back to 'em.

And I think just the fact that they make so much noise puts more tools in your pocket on what to do in the situation. Yeah. And maybe that's how they're quote unquote easier in some circles that they scalpel so much, [00:12:00] they're giving you more information, yeah. Every time they go. And then you can.

Just, and we've all had eastern hunts that were similar. We've all had those like where you had a Turkey that would literally respond to everything Yeah. And would gobble all the way to the gun barrel. That's just it. It seems it is more common with all these, with these Miriam's turkeys, but they will also gobble while they're walking a mile away from you.

Yeah. Yeah. The gobbling does not mean interest. Yeah. To the Miriams. No. But we ended up right there around after coffees and cookies. We found a, we saw another gobbler on the other side, and that's when we went after him for a minute. And left Jake there, right? Yeah. Y'all left. He left you there because I tried to sneak around on that gobbler and get him behind him, which he did.

What a lot of Miriam's do and Houdini out of there, and. I don't know where he went. Yeah. [00:13:00] Cuz we were watching him through the binoculars. Yeah. From the truck. That Turkey went down into a ditch and never came back out. I don't know where he went as far as I know he could have went through the culvert and went under the road and went somewhere cuz I never secret Turkey tunnels.

Yeah. He's got a VE Kong tunnel and dug in there somewhere. I never saw him come out there, but, so we left to go drive around and see if we could figure out where the turkeys were at. And what we found out was that most of them were on the other property still. We watched a group of Jakes preening in the sun.

Really cool video opportunities on that little short drive. Saw another gobbler that was across the pasture, just being a pimp out there, like he was big and pretty. Yeah. He was with a little two inch beard. Yeah. His beard got frozen. All. He had a Jake Beard, but he was a giant Tom BodyWise.

He said, I [00:14:00] don't need no big beard. Yep. No, no beards necessary. His Coka probably his Coka game was on point. Yeah, it was probably pretty good, but then driving back onto the property, what we saw was there were five goers standing right where we had been calling at that morning. And they were just, it, we didn't really stop long enough to really see if there was hens there. All I saw was just several Turkey strutting. It was like, yeah, there they are. There were hands, I think, later on I'm confident we saw a couple hens, with them or in, in that vicinity of them.

Yeah. I don't think it was just goler just sitting there strutting. So they had, I think they had a couple hands of them but we were able to make a game plan went. Pick Jacob up and basically circled, we gotta take a long way around from picking up Jacob. Like we coulda, if we would've walked directly to him, it [00:15:00] would've been what, a couple hundred yards?

Yeah. From where we picked up Jacob. But in order to get into a position to kill him, we had to back up and make a giant circle around the property, up the creek bottom, through some cover to actually set up and kill him. He was, I asked you guys yesterday, it was like, if you were, if you're doing all this by yourself, what would you have done different?

I was, I like to, that hunt, a lot of people could, this hunt could be looked at as oh, that was a easy Turkey hunt. But I think there's always things you can pull from it. And so like ways that I, some things that I can do especially hunt with you guys. Who are Turkey hunters? I haven't had a lot of opportunities to hunt with other people who are also really good Turkey hunters.

You know what I mean? I've hunted with a few, but not many. Most people that I've hunted with have been first time hunters or new hunters or just getting into Turkey hunting type thing. So I would like to [00:16:00] know what you guys would do in that situation. And our answers were varied because that, Was where they, it started.

I think our differing answers is on that initial setup. We felt like we were maybe a little bit too far away and we set up maybe a little prematurely. And we all did it, but I felt like we all felt like we wouldn't have done that if we would've been by ourselves. Is that right? Yeah. Got it. Another thing too is the thing about where we set up that initial, are you talking about when we started putting the stalk on? Yeah. Yeah. When we started trying to get into a position to call him in. Yeah. That first time we were probably too far away. Yeah. We backed up and called so they wouldn't, they were gobbling.

They were gobbling. And the fact that they were gobbling, made us afraid to approach 'em. Because we didn't exactly know where they were, at that point. So we were afraid of bumping 'em. Yeah. But they started gobbling pretty quickly. How many times did we hear 'em gobble in that first setup?

It was like, Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't very many, but it was not, it was enough to [00:17:00] know that they weren't coming at us hard. Yeah. Yeah. And so made a game plan. Again, we didn't call to 'em much. It was that at that first spot we remember we backed up. I didn't, I hadn't even thought about this. That was probably, that may have been what turned them to start actually coming to us was Cause remember when we all backed up and really started, yeah.

Yeah. Going to town for a minute. To try to pull him into the position we were gonna be sitting in. I had forgotten that we did that. Yeah. We didn't have any, we didn't have any decoys with us. Yeah. And so we were planning the best place to set up was right on the edge of this clearing.

But if we had sat there and called from there, and if they would've came into this clearing, they would've seen that there were no turkeys there, and they would've hung up and probably not come into shotgun range. Easterns would've, Easterns may have. Maybe. Maybe these wouldn't have. We don't really know.

But that [00:18:00] pasture that you're referring to is our obstacle. Cuz at this point it's 10 o'clock. And the sun's shining bright and we've gotta cross this pasture. And we don't know how far these turkeys are on the other side of it in the woods. And so that was the risk that we were taking right there.

It was like we could potentially blow it. But that's the only way we're gonna get into range. And so at doing that, just belly crawling through that pasture it wasn't long after that we figured out where they were. I'd seen one as we were coming out of the sunlight. I spotted a silhouette of a Turkey over there.

And sure enough that's where they were. But they were also, from the time we saw them, they were looking our direction the whole time. They, I mean they were creeping, just inching closer and closer. But we got super lucky that there was a very large cottonwood blow down that we could stay underneath the eye [00:19:00] side of the turkeys.

Yeah. There were a couple of 'em that really saved us. That's the only way we could have crawled up on 'em. Cuz if they hadn't, if those hadn't have been there, we couldn't have closed much distance on those turkeys. Yeah. Cause we were, once we finally got to the cottonwood, Like we were 60 yards, like we were well within hear shot and eyesight.

If they saw any movement, uhhuh, it could have been over very easily. Yeah. And at that point they had stopped gobbling much. They weren't doing much and we weren't calling to 'em much. They were already headed to us. And it was pretty light calling at that point. But yeah.

It was just some light like lightest of club. And Purs and slight Yelps. And really even after that, we just shut up and made them come looking for us. Yeah, and that's, that, that's one of those things that people who have been Turkey hunting for a little bit you start figuring that [00:20:00] out.

And I can see where an inexperienced person in that situation would've come up short. Because they were responding and they were gobbling and you could very easily overdone it, I think. And maybe not, who knows, who actually knows, but I do think that kind of being a little more reserved in that approach was spot on because I don't know if you guys noticed, but once they got into shooting range, they had pinpointed the spot behind that Cottonwood.

And that's where they expected that hin to be at. Like that. I think that's why they hung up right there so long. Yeah. Yeah, they definitely periscoped up and I mean they, they were looking hard for movement or hand or something. I did scratch in the leaves or grass with a, there was mostly grass with a few leaves.

I guess there was enough stuff on the ground to make a little bit of racket, just do a little bit of feeding call and scratch there. I don't know if that's what made him take a few [00:21:00] more steps or not, but it couldn't have hurt. Yeah. So this is where it gets Western, perfectly stated. So here the way we were doing this, Jacob was first shooter, Joey's second shooter.

I'm cameraman. And we were just gonna rotate through this cycle as turkeys were killed. In this instance there were five gobbler in this group. All of them. All of 'em, long beards. And so we, we had an opportunity to triple, which I've never been in a situation where there was an opportunity to triple.

And so we talked about how we were gonna do this. Jacob was gonna shoot first. Joe was gonna shoot second after Jacob shoots. I was gonna hand the camera to him. He would hand me the shotgun and I would shoot as well if we got the opportunity. None of us, I don't think actually thought it was gonna, [00:22:00] yeah.

I don't think anybody anticipated us making it that far. A double. A double maybe. Yeah. But a triple was okay, this is best case scenario, but we have a plan just in case. And at one point in the stock we were like, it was a very serious question of do we just try to shoot one of 'em and stop trying to worry about getting, I remember you said that, Joey, a couple.

Yeah. You said. Do we just want to get one? Make sure we get one. Yeah. I, if there was a point where I was afraid they were eventually just gonna boog her outta there and I was like, we gotta, let's just get a Turkey on the ground and figure it out from there and find one of the 14 left. Yeah. Later. Yeah.

I think every experience Turkey hunter also understands that, It's okay to shoot for the stars, but Turkey hunting it, there's unexplained things happen. There [00:23:00] are so many reasons why even being in shooting distance of five long bearded gobbler, we shouldn't have even killed one.

You know what I mean? Like it happens more times than not. I think we were all pretty level-headed right there. As the camera guy, I wasn't thinking of how can we make this happen where I can shoot, not really. Maybe a little bit in our setup, but filming was priority for Joey. Getting Jacob a Turkey was priority number one, and we were all gonna get to have our turn, which is freaking awesome because I've been, I've Turkey hunted with people where it's always just like whoever shoots first scenario.

I like having that. I don't care if Jacob kills a Turkey. If Jacob kills a Turkey, that means we all kill the Turkey. Like I love, I think that's really cool. So I really enjoyed that aspect of it. And but we were able to set up pretty nicely and and prioritize a double at that point, which was Joey and Jacob shooting.

And that was [00:24:00] just like my adrenaline pumping the whole time, legs falling asleep because they were not budging. Yeah. From that spot. And it, we were in a good loca, we were in a good spot, but we didn't, we were behind the tree and not in front of the tree. So we had no real resting position. And it got tense for a minute.

And people see that in the video eventually when it comes out. I'm shaking the whole time cuz I'm trying to hold this camera up and focus on these turkeys. And yeah. You didn't have anything to rest off of? No I was. Yeah. Free balling it. Yeah. If you'll, yeah. It was harder on you to hold the camera up and stay hidden, but still have a view of the turkeys coming in Yeah.

Than me and Joey crouched behind the log. Just barely keeping an eye on the movements of the turkeys so we could shoot. Yeah. Yeah. Y'all were, yeah, [00:25:00] and that was great. I'm freaking great with that. I would rather y'all have a good position to be able to comfortably make the shot so it's not, All a waste.

And I was trying, man, I was like, I was working my, I had visions of two a days, like just pushing through the pain, and this is what we trained for. But it was, it that, that was the more memorable like flash, like snapshot of the hunt for me was watching those turkeys just redheaded as can be at 20 yards.

Wait. Trying to wait for 'em to, two of 'em to present a shot. Yeah. And we got, so we got to see Gobblers do gobbler stuff for a long time right there. And that was fun. I'm, I can't wait to go back and watch that footage. And we were able to, we were able to communicate with each other fairly well.

Like Jacob and I could, since we were sitting right next to each other, kneeling right next to each other, we were able to communicate pretty well. And we [00:26:00] were able to communicate with you a little bit but there was, Jacob and I had heard you say, I forget what exactly it was that you said, but we heard you say wait till, basically wait till I, I'll let you know when you can shoot essentially what we heard, but I forget what exactly it was that you said.

And so all this time Jacob and I are just sitting there kneeling, like ready to ease up and get a shot. Shot and inadvertently we were just waiting on Parker to tell us when to go. But that moment never came because you weren't gonna tell us when to go. No, we were supposed to tell you when we were gonna go apparently.

Yeah. Yeah. I was just telling you guys to let me know when you're about to shoot. Because I wanted to make sure, cuz I was I was taking little breaks in between, like trying to make sure that I could be. Solid for a shot. And at one point, I was per, I had great footage of the turkeys the [00:27:00] whole time.

We could have ended that hunt a long time, probably before we did. But I had just taken a little break right there and I crouched down for just a second to rest my back. Then got back up in a different hole in the tree. And I had the turkeys right there in that hole. And you guys I can't remember how I don't remember what I said or who said something.

I said, they're getting ready to move off. They were starting to turn around and go back. Okay. Yeah's, what happened? And I thought, what I thought I was hearing you say was, all right, let's do this. Or it's time or whatever the time has come. And so I said, hold on. Just a second. I was just getting into that hole and it was 3, 2, 1, and I think I got it.

I don't know what I got on it. I know I was pretty well on the turkeys, but and then three turkeys fell on those first [00:28:00] two shots. Our gun handoff was rough, but, and meanwhile, so we get up and we, Jacob and I get up and shoot. And I, we each have two tags. We have a general tag and a region specific tag for the region we were in.

I was totally fine with killing two turkeys right at then and there. So there were two turkeys with their heads pretty close together. I put Marin dot right in between them and two turkeys fell. So I tagged out with one shot. But what I guess just out of habit now, because like we talked about before, it doesn't matter who shoots a Turkey.

When I'm around, I. Want to jump up and go after it. I'm like a dog I guess. So I shoot and I'm about to jump over this log to go collect turkeys, but Parker's right behind me needing to shoot a Turkey, so I have to get back down. I said, Joey wait. And so I come around and I've got [00:29:00] two shells in this Turkey cuz Jacob shot one and the gobbler's, like they didn't booger out of there They all started to whip up on the ones that were flopping on the ground.

Yeah. And so I come around Joey and Joey's standing up and was literally standing. He gets, finally gets back down and I shoot one and it folds pretty, doesn't even flop. And right behind it is another Turkey. So I thought like I, I killed it. And then I turned to look at the guys. I was like, heck yeah, we tripped.

And there's a Turkey standing in the same spot where I just shot one and I was like, oh, no, I just missed. And so I can't remember what happened. I was like, do I shoot? Should I, he asked me if he should shoot, and I was like shoot it again. Shoot it again. And so I shot that one and didn't hit him.

Great. But, eh, it was enough. It slowed him down really good. And so Jacob ran over and finished that one off, and I get to look and there's [00:30:00] no more turkeys running around. And Joey's standing there. Jacob comes over, Carrie and the one that he just had, the one that I had shot, he puts it on the ground and none of us are really celebrating.

We're just standing there. Like what? I remember asking, I'm sitting there scratching my head. I said, how many turkeys did we just kill? And one of you said four with, I think we killed four. And I see Jacob coming, coming coming back with a Turkey in his hand. And I said there's four laying right here.

I had no idea you had shot two with one shot. So the turkeys that I think I was filming were the two that you killed with one shot. From my angle, it looked like those turkeys were far enough apart. I figured y'all were just going to each shoot one of them. Which I guess it really doesn't matter.

Two turkeys got shot in that frame. Then I shot two. Jacob shot one. And finally, [00:31:00] I think, Jake, you were the one who was like, you took your hat off and you're like, boys like threw it up in the air. And I was like, holy crap. He just killed five gobbler and it didn't really matter which one was which.

They all looked the same. They all looked the same. They were all identical. They were, not bad. Miriam's gobblers, to be honest with you. Like decent little seven inch beards maybe. Couple. Couple might be nine, seven or eight inch beard probably for the most spurs on a couple. They had the same wispy beards.

And then there were a couple varying sizes of spurs, but not like drastically different. No, and just big giant Joey, you call 'em Bullheads, big bullheaded Miriam's. And they were all just like when you grab 'em by the neck, when you grab 'em by the neck and you handful, you got a handful of Turkey for sure.

It is like it's a handful. Girthy, you might say Girthy gobblers. [00:32:00] It's that was an experience. That was a crazy experience. And just sitting there in that moment, we ended up stringing 'em all up on a, was it the same cottonwood that we set was right there? No, it's the cottonwood log, but yeah.

And hung 'em all up. Equal level on that tree together. And I think we set. There for a good hour. Just taking it all in. Taking it all in honor. Honor the turkeys with a cigar and good cigar and not cheap. And hoodie cigars. Smoking. That's good. Good smoking Cubans. Yeah, mine was real good. But it doesn't end there, so as crazy as, we were literally sitting there talking like, so what do you guys wanna do?

Should we take it easy the rest of the day? I had filled both of my tags for that region. Joey had filled both of his. Jacob still had one and we knew there were more turkeys around. And I feel [00:33:00] like we were probably all gonna just take it easy unless we saw one. Okay. Yeah. Cause we were planning on going to take really good pictures since we had all day make the trip up to another property up on the mountain and get some pictures up there.

Take some pictures in the cotton woods. Because we, since we had the opportunity, since it was only 10 30 in the morning. Yeah. We wanted some really good pictures of everything and five turkeys, a lot of turkeys we had a lot of work cut out for us. We were just gonna take it easy until we got up from the tree getting ready to load all of our turkeys on our.

I think we had just talked about like a pose of the turkeys hanging on either side of us or something, like taking pictures like that. And we get up and I see on the other side of where all these turkeys are hanging. I see another group of turkeys working their way across, clearing across this clearing pretty much straight to us.

[00:34:00] I, I think I said something like, I'm game y'all. To do this, we can do it. So we used our hanging dead turkeys as a blind loaded the shotguns back up and crawled a little bit. A hen moved off to our right into the drainage, and then I belly crawled down into the shadows below this lip and I was literally leaned up against a dead Turkey, two dead turkeys.

I was standing behind them filming. I was still sitting up against the tree smoking my cigar. I was just like sitting back there in my T-shirt. I done took my vest off and leafy suit all at Jazz, I was just sitting there enjoying my cigar while y'all went and did whatever, because it's not that I had no confidence that y'all could make something happen, but at this point I was like, I could care less if there's another Turkey kill here in the next little bit.

So I'm just sitting back there smoking my cigars still [00:35:00] like I couldn't find. I put down my leafy jacket. I didn't know where I put it, so I just had my leafy head net and my t-shirt on, which was a green T-shirt, but it wasn't bright green, not natural, bright green, not a natural green. It was John Deere Green.

And so it's like I was halfhearted doing this and right before I started belly crawling into a position, Parker's they're Jake's. I was like, I'll shoot a Jake. So it was funny, I was thinking about this. I think a lot of Turkey hunters, you're like, I'm not gonna shoot a Jake unless, if I haven't, if I haven't killed a Turkey all year, some people, I get that, right?

It's kinda shoot a small buck or whatever. If you hadn't killed one all year, standards start to go down. So there's that. If you hadn't killed one, that's a good excuse. But also another good excuse is, wouldn't it be cool for there to be six dead turkeys here? That was my thoughts.

That's another. Another, that's another cool thing. So Jake goes, yeah[00:36:00] I was like, okay, go for it then. And the Turkey worked into our calling, so you know, if he's gonna play, we're gonna play. Yeah. Yeah. There came to a point where I was like, oh, this may actually happen, and I put down my cigar and got my vest and I stuck a call in my mouth and was like, doing a little bit of calls back behind y'all too.

And here's the crazy thing, I didn't realize it was a Jake as it was walking up. Yeah. I didn't know what it was. I just knew it. A male Turkey, you couldn't tell, because these Jakes out here, they're freaking heads. They get bright red, bright blue. Their Jake heads out here look like a mature gobbler head.

For an Easter. They're big, long snoo, whatever. And so I had no idea. I couldn't tell. And honestly, the body side's about the same. Yeah. It's not much different. And he definitely did. He came straight to the call and he was looking for it. And I think, Jake, you called a little bit too, didn't you?

Yeah, I called a little bit when we were behind the turkeys and I called a [00:37:00] little bit after I got down into the shadows behind that log. That's what I thought. And then once I saw his head popping up over the rise, I just shut up and let him start searching around for me. Yeah. And he did, came right into shooting range.

Yeah. Just as perfect as you could ever dream of. And again, we were all like, really? What did we just tag out in one region in one morning? It's you can't get too cocky about it. There's a point y'all ever feel like sometimes you over celebrate a deer or Turkey and you're like, maybe re-watch a video or something and you're like, man, you need to start acting like you've been there before because you have.

Yeah. But none of us had ever been here before. It was a new experience. It was like okay. So it's I've never even heard of that. Yeah, that's what my dad said. I texted him the picture that Joey [00:38:00] took a picture of us CROs behind the dead. Turkeys Jake's bright freaking green shirt on with a leaf head net.

I was like the scarecrow from the Batman movie. He did, he had a bag on his end, and Dad said, I don't think I've ever even heard of that. I don't think I've, that's gotta be the first time that's ever been done. And for for all the purists out there, we didn't even use any decoys. This was wrong technically.

No, we had five dead turkeys that I was using as blind. You think that Jake got up there to that lip of the hill and he was like, what they, what are those guys? What are they inverted back there? There must be something really awesome going on over there. Shoot, it was I would love to have a snapshot of his final thoughts.

His pov? Yeah. Yeah. We should have taken a picture of his point of view back there. That would've been awesome. Why didn't we do that? Parker's head above a log full of turkeys [00:39:00] with a camera. I think you had your face mask on too, didn't you, Parker? Oh yeah, I had still had. So you were in your T-shirt? I was in my t-shirt, but it was a camo T-shirt.

It was a camo t-shirt. Sure. And I got ta, I got sleeves of tattoos on both arms, so it breaks up that pattern a little bit, but man, what a freaking day. Yeah. I don't know that will ever have that day. No. It's the odds of that happening again are so low, they border impossible. I felt pretty bulletproof afterwards.

Yeah, like you can't teach me nothing about Turkey hunt. So if we go over here and triple in this next region, I'm buying a lottery ticket. Yeah. That kid. Yeah. So I mean we've, this has literally been the best podcast I think I've ever recorded because of the view on this road trip. Like we're just driving through Montana and it's a little bit foggy.

I don't know, is that fog [00:40:00] or smoke? It may be smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Cause I saw something about that on the internet this morning that the smoke was starting to. Drift down here. It seems like more than a drift, but it doesn't look like fog. Yeah, it looks like smoke may be. So we've got a, we've got a pretty view out here recording this podcast, but I reckon that's going to do us.

But I imagine the next three turkeys that we that we kill are not gonna be that easy because while we were hunting private land, low to no pressured birds yesterday, starting today is gonna be like what we're used to. Yeah. Pressure public land, birds. And at this point, after the day we had yesterday, we've all talked about it.

If we don't kill a Turkey, it's fine. If we kill one more Turkey, that's gonna be absolutely fantastic. And if for some, by some miracle we fill those three tags,[00:41:00] that's, we probably need to go get some like testosterone. Boosters or something like that to give us the drive, because right now I'm feeling like resting the weather's not really helping with that either because it is dreary, it's been raining we're, we feel a little lethargic, and I'm sure the turkeys do too.

So we'll see what happens when the sun finally pops out. My bold prediction, I think we'll scratch a couple more out. I'm confident that, we'll, we will get it at least one. I'm excited about this. This is really the, what we're headed to do is. That's the experience that I think we all dream about.

The the hunt, the like experience of that hunt. Now what we got to experience, I would, I hope, I ne I, I don't wanna ever experience that ever again. You know what I mean? That was, it's one of the, I want to maybe equal things but different, yeah. That was super special and I.

I I'm just super grateful we got to do it. [00:42:00] It, that's what it was. What we're headed out to do. We're gonna work for it and it's gonna be a different kind of special. Yeah. This is gonna be the type two fund. Yeah. Coming up here. Yeah. We're going, gonna work for 'em, but I'm looking forward to it.

It's gonna be a blast. Yeah. We're gonna really have to, I think we're all gonna get to know each other better as hunters. After this one. Because this last one was we can't really do a whole lot of wrong. Yeah. Cause there's a bunch of tourists. We only had so much to work with this area, yep. All right fellas. Appreciate you guys joining me on the podcast. Even if it was the southern ground and not limb hangar. Still, I'm still semi excited though,

I guess just to make it, just to make it hurt a little bit more. Yeah. Turkey season's almost over. Over Joey and Deer seasons coming. So yeah, I'm grinding on a high note. At least we're That is right. High note. Hey guys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of [00:43:00] the Southern Ground Hunting Podcast.

You can keep up with Southern Ground Hunting by following us on Facebook or Instagram. We're subscribing to the YouTube channel and you can be sure to check us out. At Southern Ground hunting.com to pick up some of our merch, read some blog articles, and all that good stuff. I truly hope you enjoyed this week's episode, and we'll see you here again next week.

Remember that God gave you dominion over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the earth. So go out and exercise that dominion. We'll talk to you next week.

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